


Doesn't Hurt if You're Numb

by fairytaleslayer



Series: Beau-Centric One Shots [6]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beau emotionally implodes, Beau finally gets the support she needs, F/F, OT3, and just wants Jester and Yasha, post ep 93
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytaleslayer/pseuds/fairytaleslayer
Summary: Beau really thought she'd be making a deal with a hag today. She should have known Jester and Yasha wouldn't let her go so easily.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: Beau-Centric One Shots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1312556
Comments: 36
Kudos: 425





	1. Chapter 1

Beau was numb. 

Her mind, which occasionally ran too fast for her to keep up, was blank of any thought but the devastation she had nearly wrought upon herself. That she had volunteered - _offered_ \- herself for.

She would have done it.

It made sense. This was always going to end, anyway. This - reprieve - from her previous life. She’d never been happier, and it wasn’t a happiness built to last. Jester would go home to her mom, Fjord likely to go with her. Nott would take Caleb home with her. Yasha would probably go with Caduceus to help him tend flowers in his graveyard. Maybe home to Xhorhas, where things were familiar. Once they’d achieved whatever it was they set out to do.

But Beau? This had always been a stop gap in her story of borrowed time. She’d never imagined a future for herself, and honestly this was better than anything she could have dreamed up. It was worth it - to make sure the others got to keep being the Nein until they disbanded. 

They’d probably miss her, for a bit. They’d be angry at her, most likely. It didn’t matter. As long as they were okay.

But - 

But Jester had come running out of the hut, saying the curse was lifted and they had to go ‘Right now, seriously guys, right _now_ ’, and was dragging Beau with a tight, clawed grip on her upper arm. 

Beau had stumbled one time too many, going to her knees only for Jester to haul her to her feet again that finally Yasha had simply lifted her up and carried her the remaining way until Caleb deemed them a safe distance to stop and let him draw the circle to take them to Xhorhas. 

It seemed like Beau blinked, and they were back in their house. She didn’t remember arriving or the walk back until Yasha was placing her on the tabletop in their common area. “Beau?” A hand on her shoulder, a warm attempt at reassurance, but Beau hardly felt it. 

“What’s wrong with her?” Fjord asked, sounding worried.

“She’s in shock,” Caduceus answered quietly.

A general murmur of discontent from several of the Nein before Fjord spoke up again. “But - it’s fine now. Jester fixed it. Quite brilliantly too, I might add. Nobody had to give up anything to the hag.”

“Beau.” Yasha approached cautiously, as if Beau was a wounded animal, but Beau took no notice of her surroundings. “Beau, talk to me,” she coaxed. 

“I’m going to put on some tea,” Caduceus decided. “Everyone just - maybe give her some space? Beau might want you two,” he nodded at Jester and Yasha, “but the rest of us. Let’s give her a break, alright? It’s been a hard couple days.”

Yasha gathered Beau into her arms again - the monk’s body was practically vibrating, though no emotion showed on her face other than vacancy. Jester followed her up, all her victorious feeling at tricking the hag dropping as she took in just how absent Beau was.

“Beau?” Jester murmured, taking her hand gently as Yasha set her down on a bed this time. “Beau, can you hear me? Beau.”

* * *

Someone was saying her name. Jester. Jester needed her. Maybe it was time to go in. She was the fastest. She’d make it in before anyone else had taken a step. 

Beau stumbled to her feet, catching Yasha and Jester by surprise so that she was almost at the bedroom door before they grabbed on to keep her in the room. 

“It has to be me,” Beau mumbled, still trying to get free, though her movements were slow and numb and ineffective. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Jester was about to ask what Beau was talking about when Yasha grunted, hauling Beau into her lap and encircling her waist with one arm and her shoulders with the other to keep her in place. “It is not going to be _anyone_ , Beau,” Yasha told her. “Jester fixed it. Remember?”

“It’s okay.” Tears were running down Beau’s cheeks and she was still trying to get away from Yasha, though it wasn’t difficult to hang on to her. “It was always going to end like this.”

“Like what Beau?” Jester asked tremulously. “You leaving?”

Beau shook her head, eyes clearing up for a moment as she gained some clarity. “With me losing. I didn’t - I don’t - I can fix this. I’m already tied up with her anyway, you know. It’s fine. I’ll - I’ll go back there, and I can make sure I fix this. Never thought I’d make it this far, but now I can do something with this extra time. No war, and Yasha won’t lose her memories of Zuala, and you’ll get to have everyone, Jessie. This is the best I could hope for, really.”

“What are you talking about, Beau?” Jester demanded, fidgeting and growing tense. “It’s not everyone if you aren’t there too. Yasha, tell her!”

Yasha’s mouth opened to do just that, but Beau spoke first. “Nott said it herself. This was all going to end anyway. Sooner or later. Might as well make something good come from it.”

Jester got closer, pressing her hands to both of Beau’s cheeks. The monk’s skin was cold and damp, and she was shivering and crying so silently that Jester had hardly noticed. Was that how Beau had learned to cry, growing up? To cry quiet so no one - her _father_ \- would hear her? The thought made her sick and furious. “Beau. No one’s going _anywhere_. Especially not you. If you - if you leave, I’m - I’m - I’m gonna be so _mad_ Beau. You can’t let her win, Beau. She doesn’t decide your destiny. You remember? It was the three of us, you, me, and Fjord, and I told you we were going to be something really really special. Remember?”

Beau shuddered, collapsing in on herself, but still her cries were silent. Yasha softened her grip, shifting so she could hold the smaller woman more comfortably as she murmured in her ear words she used to tell Zuala when she woke from a nightmare. “You’re alright, Beau. I’m here, and nothing is going to happen to you.”

* * *

That wasn’t the story she’d grown up hearing. She’d always been alone - the one who didn’t fit in with the Lionett’s newfound fortune. Not the expected son, not even the daughter her father had _settled_ for. 

The hag dealt in misery, didn’t she? Required misery of one for the fortune of another. So - was she the payoff, the misery her father received for his fortune, or was she the one in misery as a price for her father? 

Either way, she’d didn’t fit.

Always fucking things up.

 _"I'_ _m_ what happens to other people,” she gasped out in direct denial of Yasha’s reassurances. “Even if I _don’t_ fuck up, things always fall apart around me. This was supposed to be the way for me to leave before that happens - leave it better before I ruined it. I could fix this _one_ thing. But Jester fixed it already, and now I’m just going to fuck something else up and I won’t be in control of that and I _need_ -” she cut herself off. “I could give Nott that,” she muttered a moment later. “I could have done it.”

“Beau…” Jester sniffed, bringing their heads together.

“You’ll be better off, after,” Beau continued, needing them to _understand_ what she was trying to give them. “You all have more to lose. I - I just have you. My sacrifice - it’s just mine. That’s the way it was always going to go, who am I kidding? But I can keep you from losing anything else.”

“NO!” Jester yelled, jerking to her feet, well and truly angry. “No Beau! You don’t get to! You think - what? That if you were gone we’d all just forget and move on just like that?” Her eyes were sparking with bluish white energy. “That we could ever be whole again, or the Mighty Nein again, without you?! That’s so fucking stupid, Beau you don’t - you don’t get to leave!”

Yasha shifted like she was going to say something, maybe rein Jester in, but the tiefling was spitting mad for really the first time anyone had ever seen her. She’d even drawn Beau’s attention away from her inner turmoil for the moment, the monk staring at her with some kind of awe. It truly was a sight to behold. 

“Without you, we’re not the Mighty Nein, Beau. _You’re_ the one who pushed us - convinced us we could be better. After - After we lost Molly, you kept me going. Kept us going,” Jester insisted. “For him, but for ourselves too. And I can _see_ you Beau. I can see you building your walls up ever since you volunteered to go back to Kamordah for Nott. I know it must seem like we always put everyone else’s problems before yours, and I’m so sorry, Beau. I love you so much, and I’m sorry I didn’t make sure you knew that.”

“I stayed for you,” Yasha added quietly, spinning Beau partway around so they could make eye contact. Beau wasn’t moving, wasn’t speaking, but Yasha could tell she was listening with everything she had. Desperate for some kind of confirmation of what Jester was saying. “After Mollymauk. I know I left for a while, but I came back for you. I think maybe you believe that - that Zuala was someone more like Jester. Full of life, and fun, and sweet. Someone not like me or the rest of Xhorhas. But she was a lot like you, Beau. And I didn’t come back because you remind me of her, either - that’s not what I’m saying. I wanted to see who you were beyond that. Who you could be.”

“Who am I?” Beau whispered, voice cracking.

“You’re our family. And irreplaceable, no matter what you might think. You’re happiness is worth just as much as any of ours, and not something to be used as a bargaining chip. You will never have to sacrifice yourself for one of us, okay? None of us will ask that of you - and if someone does, I will slice them in two,” Yasha promised.

A sob ripped from Beau’s chest. “Please,” she whimpered, reaching out for Jester, who immediately grabbed her hand. “I don’t want to go, please. I don’t want to be alone anymore - I can’t be alone. I want to stay here and fight with you guys and help people. I want to get my mom and TJ away from my father. I don’t want to be a bargaining chip for someone else’s happiness anymore. Please, don’t make me go,” she begged.

Jester took Beau from Yasha, easily lifting the slightly taller woman into her own lap. Yasha kept a hand on Beau’s back and tried to offer some amount of comfort to the emotionally imploding girl. “You aren’t going anywhere, Beau,” Jester promised harshly. “We’re going to keep being a family forever and anybody who tries to take you away from us will have to pry you from my dead fingers.” She hugged Beau tighter, trying to hold her together even the slightest bit. “You belong to us now - not your father, not the hag, no one but us. Promise.”

Beau burrowed into the hold and buried her face in Jester’s neck as she reached out to grab onto Yasha’s hand. “I love you,” she murmured to the room.

“We love you too Beau. Always.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beau has some more emotional recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've finally worked out all the feelings I have about episode 93, we're good now. At least until someone actually TALKS to Beau (I hope to god next week), and I get emotional all over again.

Beau was gone when Jester woke up in the earlies hours of morning. She had eventually coaxed Beau into laying down on the bed with her rather than stay uncomfortably curled in her lap. Yasha had gotten to her feet - either to lock the door or leave, Jester wasn’t sure - but Beau’s whining whimper at the lost presence and fresh onset of tears had Yasha kneeling at her side in an instant. They’d fallen asleep that way, Beau seeming unusually small as she curled in and buried herself practically under Yasha’s larger frame.

But now there was a Beau shaped hole between Jester and Yasha, and no sign of Beau anywhere else in the room. The first stirrings of panic filled Jester’s gut as she leapt from the bed. “Yasha!” she whisper-yelled, not wanting to wake the whole Xhorhaus and cause a panic before she knew if Beau was actually missing or not. “Yasha wake up wake up!”

“Jester?” Yasha mumbled. She opened her eyes blearily and blinked up at the frantic tiefling. “What’s wrong?”

“Beau’s gone! We have to find her oh no what if she went back to the hag she was so out of it last night maybe she still doesn’t know everything’s okay!” Jester rambled in a long sentence that was nearly impossible for Yasha to keep up with.

Nevertheless, she hauled herself out of bed after getting the gist of what Jester wanted from her. “Alright.” She rubbed her eyes and yawned. It had been a long few days, and Yasha was _exhausted_. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how Beau and even Jester might be feeling. “Let’s go find her.” An absentminded kiss to the top of Jester’s head, between the horns, and Yasha wandered out of the bedroom.

Jester took the first floor, searching their makeshift basement where Beau sometimes liked to isolate herself, the kitchen, their ‘war room’. She even peaked into Caleb’s room and his library, but didn’t see anything and she shut the door before Frumpkin sounded the alarm. 

Yasha wasn’t having any better luck on the second floor. She didn’t exactly trust herself to be sneaky enough to poke around in other people’s bedrooms without them waking up, so she mostly just listened for any unusual noises. 

Nothing.

Growing concerned, Yasha climbed the stairs to their rooftop garden. All was still, until Caduceus sat up in his little lean-to by the Wildmother’s shrine. “Hey,” he murmured. “Was wondering when I might see one of you. She came wandering up - oh, ‘bout an hour ago. Didn’t stop to say hello just climbed on up.” He nodded at the high limbs of their lit tree. “Everything alright?”

“I am - not sure,” Yasha said. “I’ll uh, go up there, I guess.” She was not a big tree climber. That was very much more Beau and Nott’s thing. But if Beau was somewhere up there...there wasn’t much of a choice. With a sigh, Yasha started to forcibly pull herself along until she reached the lowest branches. After that, the going got a little easier. 

Eventually, as the branches got thin enough that Yasha began to worry they may not hold her much longer, she came across Beau. The monk was huddled at the crook of the branch, face buried in knees tucked up tight against her chest. 

At least she hadn’t run off. Even if it looked like they might have taken a few steps backward again, at least Beau was still here.

“Beau?” Yasha called quietly, hoping to not startle her out of the tree. “Can I come up?”

Beau’s head nodded without raising from her legs. 

“Okay. I’m going to touch you,” Yasha warned her as she maneuvered herself behind Beau so that she could lean against her chest. 

Just as she was getting them both settled again, Jester’s Sending rang in her head. “ _Yasha! Did you find her? Is she in the house somewhere? I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find her!”_

“I’ve got her, Jester,” Yasha replied. “We’re in the tree. She’s okay, I think, but you can come too and make sure. She hasn’t said anything yet.” She wrapped her arms around Beau’s shivering frame. Beau had ditched her coat somewhere - Yasha made a note to find it before they went out again - and her arms were chilled in the wind that inevitably blew when they were a hundred feet in the air. “Beau? Can you talk to me? Did something happen?”

Beau shook her head before seeming to decide that Yasha was more comfortable and she twisted around to clutch at her shirt and bury her face in Yasha’s shoulder. “Where’s Jester?” she said, voice muffled by the cloth.

“She’s coming,” Yasha soothed. “She’ll be here in just a minute.” She was a little bit off, given that Jester appeared through her magical doorway not ten seconds later. Beau startled, but Yasha kept them both from falling out of the tree. “Careful Jester,” she warned.

“Sorry,” Jester apologized, much more subdued than she had been earlier. “Beau? What’s going on?”

Beau held out a hand, relaxing when Jester gripped onto it. “Thought it was a dream,” she muttered. “Thought - I thought maybe - was back in Kamordah. That I was going to have to let the hag take me. I didn’t want to, so came out here.” The words were disjointed, but Yasha and Jester could pick up the general meaning. 

“You are _not_ going back,” Jester said firmly. “ _N_ _one_ of us are going back Beau, and none of us are leaving, remember? You’re not leaving, the hag isn’t taking anyone she ate my super duper special cupcake it’s okay. I promise, Beau.”

“I don’t have to leave?” Beau asked, voice shaking. “That was real?”

“ _So_ real,” Jester confirmed. 

Yasha shifted, her ass going numb from the thin branch digging into the muscle. “Beau, I think it might be better if we do this on - solid ground. You know? So we - don’t fall. Why don’t you let Jester take you down, and I’ll follow,” she suggested.

“I can do it, I won’t get hurt,” Beau reminded her, voice still a little off, but at least slightly more present than it had been. “It’s what I’m good at.”

Both Yasha and Jester flinched at the words that were eerily similar to what they’d heard the day before. “Why don’t we play it safe tonight Beau? I think it would make - me and Jester - we would feel better if you let Jester take you, right? I think so.”

Jester nodded rapidly. “Yeah Beau! Come on! You haven’t come through my door since the night we fought Avantika. It’s more fun when you don’t have to run for your life right after.” After a moment, Beau reached out to take Jester’s hand and they disappeared in a flash. Yasha went down much less carefully than she’d ascended, wanting to reach the pair again before too much time passed.

Beau was being more responsive and seemed more present, but Yasha was still afraid of what she might do if given the opportunity. Or if she felt it was necessary. Beau had made it clear she believed wholeheartedly everyone else’s lives and well being were more important than her own, and while Yasha wasn’t sure how to go about convincing her of the opposite, she was more concerned about keeping her still and alive long enough to even begin trying. 

“There’s a few more hours until the day begins,” she said once she reached the roof again where Jester and Beau were waiting for her. “I think we can go back to bed for a little while.” Without asking, Yasha scooped Beau back up into her arms. She needed the reassurance that Beau was still with them.

\--

“You didn’t let me leave,” Beau said, voice absent enough again to sound like she was talking to herself. But both of them heard it. “You didn’t - you were going to stop me. I could have done it - faster than all of you. I was _going_ to do it.”

Jester bit her lip with a fang to keep herself from going into a rage again. They’d all done enough yelling for one night. For once in her life, Beau should be and _needed_ to be handled delicately. Gently. Screaming would get them nowhere. “You’re the fastest, that’s true,” she finally agreed. “But _I_ think - you had the chance, Beau. You were all alone in that hut, and none of us had any idea what you were offering. You could have shaken her hand and been done with it.”

Beau flinched.

“But you didn’t. You came back out to us. You told us what you’d offered, and you gave us the opportunity to intervene. You _wanted_ us to stop you from going through with it, I think.”

Yasha chimed in next, voice as gentle and non-accusing as she could make it, but she needed to know. “Was it a test to see if we all cared enough about you to try?”

Beau shook her head almost violently, her entire body trembling with the force of her dismissal. “I was - I didn’t - no,” she stumbled over her words, searching for them in ways she rarely struggled with. “I was... _begging_ somebody to come up with a reason I could stay,” she finally admitted. “For help - I needed someone to tell me I could stay. To stop me.”

Jester’s arms flung themselves around Beau and she tugged the monk in close, as if Beau was still actively trying to leave them. “No one is taking you from us,” she made the same promise she had just a few hours ago and hoped that maybe this time it would sink in for Beau just how much Jester believed it. “You’re ours, and some stupid old hag that lives off _misery_ isn’t going to change that. And we’re going to be right here until you believe me Beau.”

“Both of you?” Beau asked timidly, looking over her shoulder for Yasha.

“Both of us,” Yasha promised, laying a kiss on Beau’s temple and pulling them both back to lean against her. They were so much smaller, yet anything but fragile. At least most of the time. “Go to sleep Beau. It’ll be better in the morning.”

\--

“Is she sleeping?” Jester’s whisper drew Yasha out of her contemplation of Beau’s resting form. 

Taking a slow breath, Yasha looked down at Beau again, more focused, then over at Jester. “Yeah. She’s asleep.”

Jester’s brows were furrowed and she was frowning heavily, looking near tears. “What are we going to do? She’s so - I don’t even know but it’s not good. I want to ask my mama but I don’t think she would know how to help something like this. The Traveler neither.”

“I think…” Yasha sighed. “I think the best thing right now is time. It at least dulls pain until it’s more manageable and something she’ll be able to handle. Until then, we just have to learn what will help her day by day. There’s nothing else we _can_ do really.”

“Is that the only thing that helped when Zuala died?” Jester asked hesitantly.

The stabbing pain Yasha had come to expect whenever she thought of her wife was less ferocious than usual. Everything Yasha had been through since finding the Nein - and she’d finally learned acceptance and that letting go didn’t mean forgetting. She’d forgotten enough - lost enough time. She wasn’t going to waste any more of it. “Meeting Mollymauk, meeting all of you, _that’s_ what helped. Even when it seemed like I was running from it. You two always had me wandering back.”

“We’re pretty great,” Jester agreed with a sniff.

Yasha chuckled, trying to keep quiet. “You are. And I am thankful for both of you - and everyone else in the Nein.”

Beau shifted, curling closer to Yasha’s chest. Jester wrapped in tighter from the other side, and they ended up rearranging until Beau had somehow managed to be lying practically on top of Yasha in her sleep, with Jester right next to the aasimar and an arm over Beau. Beau’s eyes flickered open for a moment, not fully aware. “Love you,” she muttered as she sank back into sleep.

Jester practically cooed at Beau acting _cute_ of all things. “I can’t wait until she’s better. We’re going to have so much _fun_.”

That drew another quiet laugh from Yasha, the rumble in her chest making Beau hum back. “Being around you two is always entertaining. I’m sure that won’t change anytime soon.” Jester leaned up to give Yasha a quick kiss and then settled back in next to Beau, giving her a kiss too though she didn’t respond, finally deeply asleep for the first time in days. “Sleep now Jester. Tomorrow we’ll work on Beau feeling better,” she promised. 

It was easier to drift off that time, knowing the other two were safe and in her arms.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After everything over the last few days, as it all finally calms down, Beau still isn't sure what really happened after she almost made the deal with the hag. Yasha and Jester didn't - they didn't love her. Not that way. Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post ep 94 with some elements from the episode borrowed.

The rest of the Nein wanted to speak with Beau after everything with the hag - to make sure she understood that it wasn’t just Yasha and Jester who would fall apart if Beau was lost. That she might fear this endeavor one day ending, but losing her would truly see them losing themselves. They didn’t corner her. They waited until they were on the road again, after Jester had fully explained what she did to the hag and everyone’s immediate fears were soothed. _T_ _hen_ they turned to Beau. 

“Take your own advice,” Caleb murmured in a soft tone, as if to a wounded animal. “Don’t go.”

Beau eyes were locked on his, trying to comprehend her words from _so_ long ago being turned back around on her. “I -”

Fjord poking her arm relentlessly, some comment about her muscles she answered blithely. “Why would we have come running in at a yelp?” he asked - maybe for the second time, Beau was so overwhelmed she wasn’t quite paying attention. 

The inane question made her want to act like a teenager. “Because we _care_ about each other...” she drawled, rolling her eyes to not show how much those words actually meant to her.

“Oh fucking shit, we do? Amazing. And does that apply to you as well?”

All heads turned toward her as Fjord kept poking her arm, and Beau wanted to shrink into the ground. She couldn’t meet Jester’s or Yasha’s gaze, not wanting them to see the truth in her eyes. That for her entire life until the Nein, it _hadn’t_ applied to her. Any care she’d tried to show was always thrown back in her face - until she learned to hoard it and hide it and keep it safe in a tiny, walled off part of her heart that nobody else could reach and damage. Even after meeting the Nein, that little bit of her was jealously guarded. And in the cold light of day, it was hard to keep believing Jester’s and Yasha’s words from the night before. 

Besides. Even if nobody _actively_ tried to leave and break up the Nein, they kept dying anyway. Someday, the clerics wouldn’t be able to bring one of them back. Better to keep her heart safe and not get any more reliant on this group than she already was. It was too much - would _be_ too much if she fell anymore and then lost one of them. She refused to acknowledge the little voice in her head saying Yasha and Jester would hurt the worst.

She _couldn’t_.

“I-unno…” she muttered, whining a bit.

They laughed at that, and it made Beau feel a little better - she could still make them laugh, even when emotions were whirling uncontrollably within her. She was still trying to process everything Yasha and Jester had told her the night before - their promises to stay and never make her leave. That they loved her. They wanted her.

It was pretty much too fucking good to be true.

\--

When they had all settled within the dome that night, Beau volunteered for first watch. The rest were exhausted from some fucking things that exploded with acid or poison or some shit, and Beau was the only one unfazed by the burning fluid. So she stayed up while the others rested.

Once she was sure they were asleep and out for the night, she wandered away toward another clearing, wanting some space. The last three days had been a _lot_ , and Beau was still reeling from everything. 

Had Jester and Yasha really said they _loved_ her? In what way? What did that mean? It couldn’t possibly mean what Beau wanted it to - there was no way she was that lucky. She should just be grateful they hadn’t all forced her out for wanting to give herself up in the first place. Really she’d gotten off easy.

Everything was fine.

Totally fine.

…

“Beau?”

Beau flinched at Jester’s voice piercing the dark calm around her. “Hey Jes,” she said tightly a moment later. 

“Were you - were you leaving?” Jester asked, voice wavering just a bit.

“...No, Jester,” Beau sighed. “Just needed some space, that’s all.”

“From us?”

This was why she’d wanted some separation, even though it was really the last thing she wanted. She couldn’t - everything was too much. Yesterday she’d _almost_ made a deal with a hag who had ruined her life before it ever even started, without ever planning to tell the rest of her friends what she was planning to do. Only the guilt she knew she’d feel on top of misery if she left them in the dark had Beau going back out there. That, and she was hoping to Ioun and begging the sky that someone had an idea that would get her out of it.

Jester had saved her. 

Jester might not ever know just how much she’d saved Beau over the last year. 

“My head’s not on right Jessie,” Beau finally admitted. “There’s - a fuck ton going on up there, and not a lot of it is good right now.”

“But we’re here, Beau,” Jester protested. “We want to help and we _want_ you to talk to us! And I know Nott said what you did was really brave, but giving up your family isn’t brave Beau. It’s not okay. You _can’t_ give us up. None of us want you to be miserable for us. It’s wrong what Isharnai did, feeding off other peoples’ misery. And what your father did, playing into that and making your childhood so shitty and stupid. _He’s_ the asshole Beau, not you.”

“It was never you,” Yasha murmured from behind Beau, having been drawn from sleep by Jester’s raised voice. 

Beau spun to face the newcomer, heart pounding. This was all getting to be too much like the night before. Her head was getting overwhelmed again. What did they _mean_?

“It’s like Fjord said,” Yasha continued.

“Yeah, except for where he said you care about him most of all it’s _obviously_ us, duh,” Jester broke in.

The corners of Beau’s lips tilted up briefly as she remembered Fjord’s annoying big brother-ing from the afternoon. That had been the calmest she’d felt in days, messing around with him. “Yeah I uh, love you guys. Or whatever. Yeah. It’s fine,” she stuttered, wincing at how she was trying to brush it off.

“Beaauu,” Jester complained, bouncing up to throw her arms around Beau’s shoulders. “We _know_ you love us, we’re trying to show _you_!”

“Oh.” Beau thought about that, frozen in place with Jester still wrapping her up. _Oh_. “Like. Rea- how? That’s - I mean, of course. Yeah, I know that. We all love each other, right? Kind of what we’re all about.” 

Fucking damn that little piece of her heart trying to worm its way free. 

A hand larger than her own grabbed her chin gently, but firmly, and pulled her into a kiss that left Beau dumbstruck. “No Beau,” Yasha said. “We don’t all love each other like that. And no matter what - up here says,” she tapped Beau on the forehead with one finger, “you need to know that. Last night wasn’t us helping our friend.”

“Yeah, that was because we love you _so_ much and like, have crushes on you, and I kissed you last night but I don’t think you were awake actually so I’m sorry about that,” Jester rambled. “I just love you lots, okay? And I was so scared you were going to leave me. And Yasha.”

“Wait you kissed me?”

“I mean.” Jester blushed. “Yeah. And Yasha - I kissed her too.”

“Wait. Hold the fuck up.” Beau shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around everything. “Yesterday was the hag right? That just happened yesterday? I - I offered to -” she frowned at her inability to express herself without wanting to cry some more. “My offer to leave was yesterday, and then you got pissed at me, I think Yasha carried me somewhere in there, we were in the tree at some point? I woke up on _top_ of Yasha, and now we’re here, and you’re saying you kissed me last night?”

“Well yeah!”

“Oh. Okay. Like - cool.”

“Will you please never do that again?” Yasha asked to get them back on topic. “Promise not to give up on us.”

Beau looked up at the aasimar, biting her lip. “I didn’t want to,” she whispered. “It just...seemed like what was best. The least amount of people caught in the crossfire. I learned how to be alone a long time ago.”

“Forget how to be alone, then,” Jester insisted.

Yasha reached up to run her hands along the short length of Beau’s undercut. Beau leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut. “I’m sorry for what he did to you,” Yasha said, “but he didn’t ruin you and he didn’t break you. You didn’t let him. You survived long enough to get to us, and you’ll never be on your own again. More than just me and Jester will see to that.”

Beau swallowed down her emotions in a desperate attempt to remain calm and took a step back. Everything they were saying - it was what she’d always wanted to hear as a kid. She wanted to believe Yasha. More than anything.

“You are smart and - and you’re strong, and you are _so_ loved,” Yasha continued quietly. “By all of us.” She approached Beau again slowly, not letting her get too far away without letting her know that they’d keep coming after her. Jester was watching and bouncing on the balls of her feet as she waited to see what Beau would decide. 

She didn’t cry. She was done crying over her past. Beau _did_ let herself sag and fall forward into Yasha’s chest, allowing the taller woman to take on her weight with the trust that Yasha wouldn’t let her down. Jester collided with Beau’s back a moment later. Beau shivered when Jester buried her face in her neck and pressed a soft kiss to the open skin there. “I love you too,” Beau muttered. She vaguely remembered saying those words the night before, but she wanted the other two to know she meant them. And always would.


End file.
